A little bit of further reading reveals that all the configuration data that was lost by Cisco could not be backed up locally by the users. Apparently Cisco don't allow the users to back up their own data. It's all cloud or nothing. Trust the cloud, they've got your back.

Sweden’s Transport Agency moved all of its data to “the cloud”, apparently unaware that there is no cloud, only somebody else’s computer. In doing so, it exposed and leaked every conceivable top secret database: ...

A large number of these 47 bitcoin losses were due to cloud computing infrastructure breaches. The companies that ran* the bitcoin exchanges using cloud based servers to conduct their bitcoin operations had absolutely no control and relied upon the good nature and the "good" security of the cloud operators.

Another thing that strikes me as stupid is people trusting unregulated companies with their funds. Geez, just setup a bitcoin exchange, make a sexy looking website and watch as people deposit coins into your wallet. It would be so easy to later pretend you had some breach and run off with everything.

I use Bittrex for cryptos, at least it's not shady. I mean, to exchange cryptos, not long term storage (well, to exchange with fiat you have to use something else, like Kraken, but that's god-awful slow, so move your funds from there as fast as possible, I recommend XRP to transfer funds because fees are very small).

For long-term storage, make your own wallet, and write your private key somewhere safe (off a computing device since hardware can break -- yeah, use paper on top of digital backups).

Here's a way to ruin your day without bitcoin because that's typical "if you bought bitcoin in 2011 blabla", so something much shorter term: If you bought $1k worth of Litecoin at 5$ at beginning of this year (2017), you'd now have about $70k. (that means within less than 1 year and only 1000$ risk)

Here's a way to ruin your day without bitcoin because that's typical "if you bought bitcoin in 2011 blabla", so something much shorter term: If you bought $1k worth of Litecoin at 5$ at beginning of this year (2017), you'd now have about $70k. (that means within less than 1 year and only 1000$ risk)

Sure, but the problem here is choosing which *coin to invest in. There are hundreds of possible candidates, if you invested $1000 in all of them how much money would you have after one year? Some will lose everything, some will be even, some will double, maybe one will gain 50-fold. And let's not forget that actually managing to get that money back again is not going to be easy. Many places have limits on daily withdrawals (and the ever present threat of hacks or fraud spiriting away all your coins).

Heh That's half right though, I mean Litecoin isn't a truly obscure coin like those new coins made for a quick buck. Although Litecoin was one of the contenders (it's supposed to be a "faster bitcoin") to the top places (in terms of market cap), of course excluding Bitcoin now.

I regret not having invested in Litecoin even last week when it was only $100 While not as impressive as 70x it's still at least a 3x value now and that was only one week ago. Sure, you can argue the coin goes to zero, but that's quite unlikely since it was pretty "big" already last week and hasn't moved much for a while.

There's way too many cryptos, I guess it's like software standards, but at least the market will decide which ones are truly going to be useful overall instead of just speculation. Most of them are different enough to have different values (underlying algorithms, method of mining or distribution, network they're part of, etc).

Though I believe that will come later, after 2018, since right now the market for cryptos is very tiny relative to the amount of fiat money in circulation. That's why they are so volatile (it's like microcaps in stocks) so if you want to win big it's probably wise to invest before they replace fiat.

Well, in my opinion, they will replace fiat money, it's just a matter of time. If none of the decentralized ones (we all know government loves control) then maybe a state-sponsored centralized currency, probably they'll find that in Ripple since it's already used by banks. When a few cryptos start to become normal and not volatile it will be too late though, at that point it will be no different than other currency pairs like EURUSD. Meh.

But remember that without risk there's no gain either and especially when there's disruptive change the risk is greatest but also the potential to come out on top. (just remember to keep your risk small by only investing smallish in cryptos, don't bet the farm on them cause they're too volatile)

That said, can you imagine a world where transactions happen in 5 seconds or less around the whole world, and fees are a couple of cents per transaction no matter how big it is? That's why I think cryptos should replace fiat, even if they are sponsored by the government and centralized. I don't care about decentralization, only the low fees and fast processing. I'm sick of the traditional banking bullshit taking as much as 2% of the entire fucking transaction and taking days, if not weeks, to process.

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